Advice

[calumn]

Hello

I have a computer and web development forum here: www.computalk.net

It has been up and running for about 1 and 1/2 years with 15,000 posts now and getting more active daily.

Today I got the custom skin upgraded then upgraded the forum to 3.8

I have a few things that I am looking to get answered or get advice on. As you can tell I am not really running this forum for profit (I make a loss) and don't have a huge budget:

1. Spam - We got tonnes of spam like 50+ threads a day until I installed a modification that limits users with under 25 posts from posting links or images. This worked but we still get tonnes of spam bots every day who join. Recently we had 7000 members I deleted 2000 unactivated members, about 2000 non-post members that had joined and then using MySQL I deleted any members with words like sex, porn, viagra etc. in their name. This cleaned them up but they still join. I recently set up askiment as well as switching to ReCaptcha (did it today) and it seems to have dropped but I wonder if anyone has any other advice?
2. Hosting - I currently have a 512Mb VPS at WiredTree that I use to host computalk and a few other sites. However I very often hit the RAM limit and computalk uses quite a lot of memory. I have done some optimisation tips from vbsetup such as moving avatars, albums etc. to the filesystem and stuff. Any other things I can do to cut resource usage?
3. Revenue - Currently the site only earns maybe $0.50/day in adsense but this may go up a little now I switched to the built in vbulletin adsense that has a more prominent position. I have heard that adsense doesn't work well on forums. I could maybe use CPM ads in which cause what is the best network? I also heard about selling private ads. Would it work me actually contacting things like small software companies etc. asking if they are interested?
4. Fighting - whats the best way to deal with disruptive and stupid members who get banned for permanently trolling, flaming, fighting etc. but then keep coming back and ruining the forum with posts about free speach etc. etc.

Thanks
Calum